KARL MARX

9
182 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
In an article on the Frankfurt Assembly published in the first issue of
the paper Engels attacked the Assembly for not defending the sovereignty
of the people and a corresponding constitution. This immediately cost
the paper half its shareholders. And a week later Marx gave the Left in
Frankfurt the following advice:
We do not make the Utopian demand that a single indivisible German
Republic be proclaimed a priori, but we do demand of the so-called
Radical Democratic party that it should not confuse the beginning of
the struggle and revolutionary movement with its final aim. German
unity and a German constitution can only be the end results of a
movement in which both internal conflicts and war with the East can
be pushed to a decisive point. 32
But the paper in general paid very little attention to the Frankfurt Parliament
which it rightly considered increasingly irrelevant to the evolution
of German affairs. Although it contained many highly gifted men, the
method of election yielded a narrowly middle-class parliament and, bereft
of any executive authority, it found itself discussing in a void. As the
months went by, it also became aware of irreconcilable divisions between
the 'big Germans' who wanted a united Germany to include Austria
and the 'little Germans' who looked exclusively to Prussia for hegemony.
And with the decline of the workers' movements from June onwards, the
middle class found itself increasingly isolated and vulnerable in face of
the Government.
With the Berlin and Frankfurt Assemblies so weak, where could the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung look for support? Engels was quite clear:
When we founded a wide-circulation paper in Germany, our slogan
presented itself automatically. It could only be the slogan of democracy
but one that emphasised everywhere and in detail its specifically proletarian
character which it could not yet inscribe on its banner once and
for all. If one refused this, if we were unwilling to join the movement
on its most progressive and proletarian wing, there was nothing left for
us but to preach Communism in a small corner magazine and found a
small sect instead of a large party of action. But we were no good at
crying in the wilderness; we had studied the Utopians too well for that. 33
The subtitle of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was 'An Organ of Democracy'
and it supported a 'united front' of all democratic forces. A mark
of this was Marx's support for the Democratic Society in Cologne in
spite of the fact that its newspaper condemned the June uprising of the
Paris proletariat. Following the principles of the
Communist Manifesto
Marx considered it the workers' main task to aid the bourgeois revolution
to achieve its aims by supporting the radical wing of the bourgeoisie. The